from the firing-the-customer dept

The attempt to nerf the NSA's new data center in Utah continues. As we covered here at the beginning of this year, legislators and activists began pushing a bill that would cut off the NSA's water supply if it continued to gather data on American citizens. It's an interesting move, one that leverages the states' abilities to combat overreaching federal laws, but one that has gone nowhere so far. The bill was discussed and then tabled indefinitely, supposedly for "further study."

On Wednesday, the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee discussed the bill that "prohibits cooperation between a federal agency that collects electronic data and any political subdivisions of the state."

Committee members expressed some concerns with the bill but no outright opposition. They asked the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Marc Roberts, R-Santaquin, to better define who would be impacted by the bill.

The members also asked questions on whether Utah taxpayers are supporting the NSA.

"I just don’t want to subsidize what they’re doing on the back of our citizens," said Rep. Roger Barrus, R-Centerville.

As is par for the course in legislative discussions, the prevailing public wind was checked. Apparently, it still blows in the direction of shutting down the NSA's water supply. Rep. Barrus' stated concerns about taxpayer subsidies are admirable, if a bit on the tardy side. As it stands now, the NSA is receiving cut rates on both electricityandwater -- both of which are expected to be used heavily. (The data center is projected to use four times as much electricity as the entire town of Bluffdale and over a million gallons of water a day.)

If the bill does pass, the effect won't be felt immediately.

Roberts’ bill would grandfather in Bluffdale’s financial agreements with the Utah Data Center, but when those agreements expire, his bill would prohibit further cooperation with the NSA. It also would prohibit any other cities or water districts from signing new agreements with the NSA.

Not that grandfathering in old agreements would ultimately matter if the bill passes. Uprooting a large-scale data center doesn't happen overnight. The NSA would be back out shopping for real estate while simultaneously attempting to have the new law overturned. It buys the agency some time but doesn't eliminate a possibly waterless future.

Jokes were made during the meeting that the NSA had not only read the bill but was listening in to the session, something that seems to indicate a new-found wariness of the agency's power -- something that obviously wasn't present when Bluffdale approved the data center… or any time prior to Snowden's leaks.

Pete Ashdown, the founder of the Internet service provider XMission, toured the Utah Data Center before the leaks from Edward Snowden. He said an NSA administrator told him the data center came to Utah because of low energy prices and people who were patriotic.

Ashdown believes the latter implied Utahns would not question what the NSA does.

Whether or not that was the NSA rep's insinuation, there can be no question that many surveillance apologists believe the same thing: patriotism means unquestioning support of your government. This attitude completely ignores the founding of this country: the violent overthrow of the standing government and the installation of principles based on the government deriving its power from the people -- not just demanding it, along with the public's devotion.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The price of a fancy meal often involves buying a story -- that the ingredients for the dishes were grown locally or picked fresh the same day or fed only grass or given free range of an outdoor plot of land. But sometimes the story behind expensive food-related items is a bit harder to justify. Would you pay more for water that was filtered a few more times than tap water? How about painstakingly sliced and heated bread? Here are just a few more artisanal items that might be a joke (or not).

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Water would be a great fuel -- if only there were thermodynamically-possible ways to extract energy from it. Water is a pretty stable compound, and it's difficult to retrieve the energy required to break its bonds. Electrolysis can break water into hydrogen and oxygen, but burning the hydrogen doesn't produce a net gain of energy. But there may be some creative ways around this problem, and some folks have actually made progress in using water (or saltwater) in an energy-generating system.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Americans drink billions of gallons of bottled water each year. Despite a significant fraction of bottled water being simply re-packaged tap water, consumers still buy water is relatively expensive bottles when potable water in generally available for free (or at subsidized prices). Studies have shown that, in blind taste tests, people can't really tell the difference between tap and bottled water. (Wine drinkers have also failed similar kinds of taste tests over inexpensive versus expensive wines.) So here are just a few links on the curious phenomenon of drinking bottled water when equally healthy tap water is widely available.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Water is one of the most important substances for life. Although it's a pretty simple molecule, water has some surprising and complex characteristics. (eg. Ice floats on water.) We see water everyday, but we probably don't think too much about its unique chemical properties (ahem, it's not organic, but it's technically true that it doesn't contain fat or sugar). Here are just a few more scientific tidbits on dihydrogen monoxide.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There's plenty of water on our planet, but unfortunately for us, not all of that water is drinkable or easily obtained. A whole ocean of water is even locked away underground trapped in minerals that we hopefully won't need to tap into for fresh water. However, drought conditions could get worse, so we might have to explore more exotic ways of getting potable water. Here are just a few desalination technologies that might become useful soon.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Drinking water is available in many forms, often for a reasonable cost as it comes out of the tap. But once you put water in a bottle, many of the reasonable prices seem to disappear, and bottled water can get truly expensive in order to get the experience of tasting water -- along with a few dissolved minerals -- that has been locked away underground for a while (or frozen in a glacier). Here are just a few alternative ways to get drinking water without buying it in a bottle.

from the water,-water-everywhere,-and-nary-a-drop-publicly-accounted-for dept

The NSA's new home in Utah is increasingly looking like a bad idea. While local politicians were likely delighted to have a federal money funnel set up shop in state, that initial euphoria has faded in the wake of the Snowden leaks.

Multiple legislative attempts have been mounted by various states to basically nullify the NSA's programs, either directly or indirectly. In Utah, the leverage point has been the public utilities. There is no doubt that the NSA's new data center consumes massive amounts of electricity. But it also goes through water like… water. Not much is known about how much the data center uses (estimates place it at about 1.2 million gallons a day), but one fact that has emerged so far is that the NSA is paying far less ($2.05 vs. $3.35) per thousand gallons than other high-volume businesses.

The Tenth Amendment Center has been pushing for the adoption of legislation aimed at cutting off public support (meaning "public utilities") for the NSA's domestic surveillance programs. While this legislative battle has been moving forward, attempts to gain more insight into the NSA's utility usage have been stonewalled by both the City of Bluffdale and the NSA itself.

This month, the Utah State Records Committee ruled that the City of Bluffdale must release water records pertaining to the massive NSA data center located there.

Salt Lake City Tribune reporter Nate Carlisle pursued the information, and his success shows how a series of small, seemingly insignificant actions can lead to a major victory.

The committee voted unanimously to require the city to make details of the NSA’s water use public last week.

The City of Bluffdale was a major combatant, insisting on collecting a $45/hour fee for compiling responsive documents. All told, the total stood at $767.45 when the reporter brought this to the attention of the State Records Committee.

The agency itself was no better. It refused to release info on its water usage by relying on the same excuse it uses for everything: terrorism.

By computing the water usage rate, one could ultimately determine the computing power and capabilities of the Utah Data Center. Armed with this information, one could then deduce how much intelligence NSA is collecting and maintaining, and this clearly relates to one of NSA's core missions, which is the collection of foreign intelligence.

The reality is that Sherman's argument requires a pretty big leap of logic. Data center engineers can get rough ideas of compute power based on how much power a building consumes, but figuring this out on water is another matter. Some data centers, like Facebook's facility in Prineville, Oregon, use custom-made swamp coolers to mist the air and cool down servers. Others push hot air into evaporative cooling towers, which are kept cold by running water.

"There are many different ways to cool a data center," says Jonathan Koomey, a research fellow at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University."Without knowing more about the actual facility then I don't think anyone's going to give you solid [computing capability] numbers."

Among the many suggestions were removing the tax subsidies from water that kept prices artificially low and starting to meter secondary usage. Nowhere in the discussion was a suggestion to funnel 400+ million gallons a year into a surveillance agency's data center.

This cut rate on top of an already artificially low water price would explain the attractiveness of the locale to the NSA, but in the end, it's the rest of Utah's citizens who will be screwed. When its water usage details are finally revealed, one can safely expect there to be more public support for the Tenth Amendment Center's attempt to literally drain the agency of resources.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you look closely enough at anything, you're bound to find more complexity and unanswered questions than you'd imagine. Especially when it comes to health recommendations, it seems like the consensus for what's "bad" for you flips every few decades. That's not exactly true, but as we learn more of the details about how substances we eat are metabolized, we have to change the simple recommendations that are broadcast to everyone. Here are just a few links on what you might want to drink (or not drink) to stay healthy.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The global food supply chain generally delivers products that are safe to drink and eat, but every so often there are some stories about unscrupulous distributors who try to sell knockoff items that aren't exactly what they say they are. The infamous 2008 scandal in China is probably the scariest example where melamine was added to infant formula to make it look like the milk had a higher protein content. Less dangerous tricks involve deceptive food labeling practices, and it can be extremely difficult to detect food fraud when it's not so egregious. Here are just a few links on identifying authentic foods.